


Predecessor

by ckret2



Series: TFSpeedwriting Prompts [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Dominus is in Pet mode the whole time but the fact that he USED to be Dominus is prominent, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17163185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Vos was pet sitting the Pet.Vos didn’t mind the torture that the DJD had subjected the Pet to. But he minded that they’d done it to a Vos.





	Predecessor

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, I'm crossposting all my fics from tumblr to ao3.
> 
> Written to the [tfspeedwriting](tfspeedwriting.tumblr.com) prompt: [ Scenario: one character is pet-sitting for another](https://tfspeedwriting.tumblr.com/post/178107844410/prompt-2-scenario-one-character-is-pet-sitting). I wrote it almost a week late lmao.

Kaon had come down with a bug.

The  _Peaceful Tyranny_  was docked on Temptoria to let him recuperate in the base under Snap Trap and Hun-Gar’s joint command. It was an excellent Decepticon outpost, in Vos’s opinion, although he heard rumbling from Tarn about how they clearly hadn’t followed the infiltration protocol. Snap Trap had explained when the DJD arrived that, given the current circumstances, with no further command from Megatron, they’d needed to hunker down somewhere they could build up fuel reserves and await further orders. Tarn accepted that, although Vos suspected that was because Snap Trap had brought along Nautilator to explain their operation, whose voice was almost a dead ringer for Megatron’s. Tarn called him “sir” without noticing twice.

Snap Trap’s co-commander Hun-Gar—who one time early in the war tried to kill Megatron, but later apologized for it—didn’t make an appearance in front of the DJD.

No surprise there.

At any rate, Snap Trap and Hun-Gar’s outpost had something that the  _Peaceful Tyranny_  didn’t: a medibay with an actual medic. And so Kaon was helped off the ship and into the Decepticon base, and Tarn went with him to watch over him.

But not before giving Vos a command.

“Don’t want to,” Vos grumbled. “I like my room. Like my  _private_  room.” It was one of the reasons he’d joined the Decepticons—for the right to have privacy again, instead of being “stored” in cramped barracks with the other weapons. (And then he’d ended up in the barracks again; but at least it was because he was a soldier, not because he was a gun.)

“ _I know you do,_ ” Tarn said, “ _but I need your help. I can’t ask Helex or Tesarus to take the Pet in while Kaon is sick, it gets skittish when it’s alone with them._ ”

Vos wondered if that was true, or if  _they_  got skittish around  _it_. Vos knew what they’d done to it, after all. Even for a pack of torturers like them, Vos thought that that was probably outside their comfort zone.  _Vos_  was fine with it, of course.

Vos told himself he was fine with what they’d done.

Vos looked down at the Pet. It was straining at the end of its leash, alternately sniffing and panting, trying to get away from the  _Peaceful Tyranny_ ’s gangplank and over to the Decepticons milling some distance away. Probably wanted to chew on them a bit.

Vos sighed heavily.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Tarn said.

Vos jerked on the chain, and the Pet yipped in pain. Another jerk, and the Pet reluctantly turned away, to follow Vos up onto the ship.

Over his shoulder, he snapped, “You owe me.” Tarn shrugged in weary resignation.

* * *

Vos’s room was a maze of datapads, dataslugs— _manufactured_ , of course, he wasn’t a barbarian—books, charts, chips, and cubes. A veritable library. One of his cases was even full of datapads in Neocybex, with a few Neocybex to Primal Vernac dictionaries to help him puzzle through the few words he still didn’t understand. He had compiled a base of scientific knowledge to make even the likes of Shockwave envious (not that Shockwave would  _admit_  it, high-caste snot that he was), and at his fingertips were tombs that elucidated scientific secrets all the way from the vaunted heavenly heights of academia, to the esoteric depths of the most heavily-guarded mysteries of reality.

The Pet had been in Vos’s room less than five minutes. It had already knocked over one case, swiped whole shelves of datapads to the floor with its tail, and  _eaten_  several dataslugs.

Vos was now screaming curses at the Pet in four languages as he played tug-of-war with a datapad that the Pet had apparently decided was a lovely chewtoy. He had to kick the Pet in the neck to get it to let go, and scrambled up to stand on his recharge slab and examine the damage.

Aww, no.  _The Ascetic Cybertronian_ , by Dominus Ambus of Ambustus Minor. It was next to impossible to find Primal Vernac translations. Vos pushed the power button, trying to turn it on.

The Pet jumped for it, trying to bite it again. “No!” Vos kicked the Pet in the chest, and it tumbled backwards, landing on its back. It whined, kicking its back legs unhappily.

For a brief second, the Pet’s perpetual collar was shifted up toward its chin enough that Vos could see up it from underneath. He could see through the neck armor that had been scraped and rubbed away by the collar, to a second, ruined face, with a crushed nose and a broken jaw.

Vos’s fuel tank lurched, his fans froze, and his fuel ran cold.

It was a lie. Vos wasn’t fine with what they’d done.

* * *

Vos didn’t mind the torture. He didn’t mind the mutilation. He didn’t mind that someone who hadn’t shaped up got what was coming to him.

He minded that they’d done it to Vos.

When Forestock had joined the DJD, Tarn had told him who his predecessor had been. He’d been brought in to meet his predecessor and Kaon at the same time. Forestock hadn’t understood why he’d been brought on at all if his predecessor was still around—until he’d seen him. Sitting on the ground, ears and tail periodically twitching in distress, one overexposed eye threatening to roll out of its torn-open socket. Snuffling and whining like an animal. Oh.

Tarn had told Forestock that the old Vos had been punished. That he was locked, permanently, in his alt mode, and his mind had been heavily altered. “ _No shadowplay_ ,” Tarn had said scornfully, “ _of course we wouldn’t dare use such perverse Autobot tools. No. We just lobotomized him_.” Kaon hadn’t spoken; he’d simply kept the old Vos’s chain wrapped tight around his wrist. Occasionally, when the old Vos whined with pain—this was when his wounds had been fresh—Kaon had petted his head gently.

Tarn told Forestock—Vos, now—all about what they had done to the old one.

But Tarn had never quite explained  _what_  he had been punished for.

There was something terrifying in that. What would push Tarn, what would push  _all_  the DJD, to do something like this?

And how would Vos know when he got too close?

Sometimes Vos looked up at Tarn, and  _up and up_  at Helex and Tesarus, and tried to figure out how much more they weighed than him. And then he’d look at the Pet, who sometimes stood for minutes at a time with its head pressed to a wall to alleviate some never-ending pain inside its cranium; and he’d look at Kaon, who when he thought no one was watching would wrap his arms around the Pet’s neck and tremble with tiny sobs; and Vos would think to himself:

I’m no larger than either one of them. I wouldn’t stand a chance.

* * *

Vos distracted himself while the Pet righted itself by trying to get  _The Ascetic Cybertronian_  to turn back on.

Nothing. It didn’t even flicker. He turned it over to examine the back; the motherboard had been punched straight through with four fangs. There was no salvaging it now. He might as well throw it away.

When the Pet jumped up again, jaws snapping, mandibles twitching, lunging for the datapad, Vos let it have it. Fine. At this point, the Pet would get more enjoyment out of it than Vos would, anyway.

The Pet gripped onto the datapad viciously, shaking its head, snarling. But in a moment, it stopped shaking, and tried to jump up on Vos.

“What!!” It was clambering up on Vos, shoving the datapad in his face. “No! Down!  _Down! Get—on—floor!_  I don’t want—” The datapad shoved into Vos’s face.

Vos punched the Pet’s exposed optic and it fell back, whining and whimpering. “Stupid animal,” he hissed—and immediately felt sick for the words.

* * *

Wondering what the Pet had been punished for was terrible. But not nearly as terrible as the punishment itself.

Many Decepticons talked about empurata as the worst thing that could ever happen to a mech. Vos had taken that to spark; he’d believed, for so long, that to  _him_ , the worst thing that could ever happen was no big deal. He’d felt invincible for most of the war. Maim him, mutilate him, torture him, he didn’t care, it couldn’t be  _that_  bad. After all, nothing could be as bad as  _empurata_. And Empurata was nothing.

To  _Vos_ , Empurata was nothing. Empurata was passé. Vos wasn’t threatened by the thought of having claws in place of fingers, because he’d never aspired to use his fingers for anything more dextrous than holding a datapad or a stylus. Vos had never had a true face, just a pair of optics, a mask, and a small hole lined with sharp points just wide enough to stick a rust stick in. And now his face was nothing but optics and sharp points. He’d gotten rid of his face voluntarily—he’d removed it toward the beginning of the war, viciously, angrily, in solidarity with those who had had their faces stolen from them without their consent. He’d thrown his face at one of Zeta’s new senators, and screamed, “If you want it, take it!” Megatron had quoted him for centuries.

But the truth was Vos had never really cared about his face. Since joining the DJD—since coming face-to-face with the Pet, and contemplating punishment, and bodies, the punishments he might have had but avoided—Vos realized that he might even have found empurata a relief. Throwing his face away was shedding a burden, something that everyone told him was precious and at risk of being taken from him. Losing it was liberating. Even losing his  _name_  had been liberating; he had to admit to himself, now, that one of the reasons he’d wanted so much to join the DJD was so that he could give up his name. Maybe that was why he’d thrown his face at the senator. Maybe he  _wanted_  the Senate to take his face. It all sounded a little Froidian, didn’t it? All these unconscious, hidden motives. Vos was no fan of Froid’s work.

But he did know he’d been alienated from his own body eons ago, long before the Decepticons had put words to the outrage he’d been swallowing for millions of years. He’d lived so much of his life coerced into his alt-mode that his body no longer felt like his own. His body belonged to other people’s hands. And it had started when Functionism had been on the rise—when he’d been demoted from a person to a weapon—when people had been reduced to their alt-modes.

From his perch on his recharge slab, Vos looked down at the Pet, scratching at the floor like it was trying to dig a hole. Like a real turbofox. Reduced to its alt-mode.

The Decepticons were supposed to be against Functionism. Vos had joined them because they were against Functionism.

But when he looked at the Pet, he felt hands on his body again. He felt fingers on his trigger. And he had to wonder how far  _he’d_  have to step out of line before Tarn decided he needed to be reduced to his alt-mode, for good.

* * *

The Pet had flopped down with its head on its datapad, occasionally pawing at its optic. Vos was cross-legged and cross-armed on his recharge berth, with nothing to read and nothing to do but glower at the whirlwind of destruction that had been unleashed on his room. Frag Tarn. Frag Kaon. Frag Kaon’s illness.

Vos kept looking at the Pet’s collar, catching himself, and looking at the ceiling instead.

While staring at the ceiling, Vos asked, without thinking about it. “You remember who you were?”

Vos didn’t have to look at the Pet to know that it had lifted its head and was looking at him.

“Do you remember your name?” he went on. “Or being part of the Decepticon Justice Division?”

He looked down. The dumb animal was just staring at him.

He sighed, and slid onto the floor. “Are you still you? Somewhere? Stuck in a body that doesn’t listen to you? Or were you destroyed? Tarn didn’t say, can’t ask Tarn. Can’t ask Kaon. Would be upset. Tarn might hear.”

The Pet slunk closer, and, when Vos didn’t pull away, flopped its head in his lap. Its damaged eye was facing up, rolling around. This close, Vos could see the mechanisms shining through it struggling to focus.

“You probably don’t understand me. Probably never spoke the mother tongue,” Vos said. “Remember our name? The one we shared? Vos?” He switched his accent to a parody of Neocybex, altering the vowel and flattening the consonant the way the city was pronounced these days, “ _Vawss?_ ”

The Pet’s ears flicked, but it didn’t otherwise react.

“You can’t understand me,” Vos said, resigned; and he still didn’t know whether it was because of the lobotomy or because he himself just couldn’t speak the right language.

After a moment, he shoved the Pet’s head off of his lap, and got back on the recharge slab. “If you chew up another datapad, I’m chaining you up in the washrack.”

He plugged into the slab, turned off his optics, and pretended to be asleep until he stopped hearing the Pet move around his room.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/178336253347/predecessor)


End file.
